Mildly worried by this development.
I expect a recession before the next election, but 2019 is cutting it fine. Corbyn's fucked if he takes office just before another crisis.

Doubly worrying because It's not certain that the current arrangement will break down and force a new election before then. Theresa May is the greatest asset to the Labour party since Transport House was sold off.

So she will definitely not be quitting as Prime Minister on August 30, 2019?

>This man is going to become Prime Minister on 1st September 2019 and it's going to be fucking awesome.

This is starting to irritate me now. Jacob Rees-Mogg has stated many times that he has no interest in becoming Prime Minister for the foreseeable future and why would he when he is perfectly suited to the life of a backbencher.

You are more likely to see BoJo take power even though he is increasingly looking like the Jeb Bush of British politics.

>>83386She wouldn't have much choice if she was forced into one. For argument's sake assume she loses a confidence vote - what's she going to do, resign and start a leadership contest in the midst of an election campaign?

>>83387>What make you think that?
The US has a recession about every 10 years (even if to keep this statistical regularity, you need to factor in the post-9/11 baby one.), The UK has been about one a decade as well since the 50s except between 1990-1 and 2008 where it was 17/18. Assuming (For argument) that the current government makes it to 2021 and a Corbyn government is in power until 2026, you've run up to 18 years.
Economically rigorous? No, but a relatively low-effort, low risk thing to take a gamble on. There are perhaps other discouraging signs (though more in other commonwealth countries), plus of course Brexit which could be a shitshow, but to analyse those would risk moving from pattern-matching to economics, so to hell with that.

Although it's probably worth wondering aloud whether poor economic circumstances would scare people back to the Conservatives and 1992 Labour rather than removing the Conservative reputation for economic competence. (Though in any case a repeat of 1992 is better for Labour than one of 2008.)

>>83387Moggy isn't the PM we want, but he's the PM we deserve. When Great Britain calls he will emerge from the shadows wielding his pipe of justice and iron slippers of stoicism and take his rightful place at No. 10.

I'm inclined to think that we aren't due a recession any time soon, simply because we haven't recovered from the last one. A lot of the apparent recovery has been illusory due to population growth; GDP might have recovered, but GDP per capita is still well below the 2007 high water mark. A boom-and-bust cycle requires a boom.

Looking at GDP per capita, we already had our second recession in 2014, despite the Bank of England insisting that there was no double-dip. GDP per capita dropped by nearly $12,000 between 2007 and 2009, but again dropped by $6,500 between 2014 and 2016.

I'm loath to suggest that our current situation is unprecedented, but I do think we're in an unusually long period of economic stagnation. It feels more like Japan's lost decade than the kind of recessions we're used to.

>Theresa May faced a growing Tory revolt over her leadership as it emerged that Remain-supporting Conservative MPs are being told by party whips that they will be seen as “supporting Jeremy Corbyn” if they attempt to soften the Brexit bill.

>Furious Conservatives, including former ministers, said such threats and arm-twisting from the whips’ office would “backfire” spectacularly, making it more likely the prime minister would face a leadership challenge this autumn.

>Tory tensions over Brexit, coupled with dismay over May’s insistence last week that she wants to lead the party into a 2022 general election, reached new heights as MPs prepared to debate the European Union (withdrawal) bill when parliament returns after the summer break on Tuesday.

>One former cabinet minister told the Observer that May’s determination to cling on to office, and her hardline position on Brexit, would “definitely” trigger letters to Graham Brady, chairman of the backbench 1922 committee, over coming weeks. If 15% of Tory MPs write to Brady expressing no confidence in her, a leadership contest has to be called.

I don't get why people are getting so pissy about Moggy's comments today on abortion and same-sex marriage. As a Catholic he is morally opposed to them but, most importantly, he respects the rule of the law and wouldn't change it.

>>83456The respecting the rule of law thing seems entirely irrelevant.
Neil "Law makers must not be law breakers" Kinnock respected the rule of law when the poll tax was in place (the snivelling hero.) but that didn't change the fact that his intention was to change the law. Respect for the rule of law is not respect for the specific law itself, or willing acceptance of it. Just for the approved structure of resolving disagreements with that specific legislation.

Furthermore "I believe abortion is morally abhorrent, but I'm content to let it continue because that's the law and nobody will vote for me if I promise to change it" is a display of unsullied conviction rivalled only by Neil Kinnock's latter day conversion to belief in nuclear deterrence.

>>83460I'd wait until the next census before you make a wild statement like that given even the most alarmist stories I can find put it at 53% in E+W (obviously the western isles etc. are still putting people in the wicker man).

My non-scientific opinion is that although most people wouldn't fit the definition of devout Christian they are more receptive to fluffy statements like 'everything happens for a reason' and 'something is watching over us'. The problem is as the majority are completely uneducated in theology they're shocked when they encounter doctrines that find sex a sin.

>therefore don't really want political leaders who do

I doubt most people care. On the flip-side only a tiny minority gave a damn about Corbyn's floppy answer to religion despite it's potential to shape the last election given May's religious nationalism.

>>83461You seem to struggle with the concept of compromise in politics. The PM is not a dictator nor does it seem like Mogg wants to create a theocracy -indeed, despite his religious views he has always come across as someone wedded to British natural law traditions.

I think there is something to be said of the nature of British culture where we can have evangelicals who don't presume to enforce their beliefs onto others.

>>83466>You seem to struggle with the concept of compromise in politics.
No, I struggle with poor messaging. Better a liar than muddled.
>The PM is not a dictator nor does it seem like Mogg wants to create a theocracy
I don't see the relevance. It's not a theocracy to buzz it through with private members bills like an evil Roy Jenkins.

I'm not going to press too far on this. I just like making fun of Neil Kinnock.

Is the Special Relationship over? Trump 'is fed up with British Prime Minister Theresa May's school mistress tone' as he snubs UK by NOT holding talks with her at the G7

Donald Trump is growing increasingly irritated by Theresa May’s ‘school mistress’ tone amid signs the Special Relationship is fraying, according to reports.

The US President has snubbed his British counterpart and will not hold a formal bilateral with her at the G7 in Canada today - but he will sit down with Emmanuel Macron.

Mr Trump is reportedly fed up with Mrs May because she always focuses on policy discussion rather than normal conversation, his allies told the Daily Telegraph. The thinks that the PM is taking advantage of the longstanding special relationship it has been claimed.

A former White House official who has been present in meetings between the pair said: ‘No offence, but she is basically a school mistress. I’m not sure anyone gets on well with her.’

A senior diplomat to the US told the newspaper that the Prime Minister’s increasing demands were putting a strain on their relationship. Mr Trump is said to be annoyed that Mrs May publicly condemns his actions - like when she rebuked him for retweeting the anti-Muslim propaganda put out by the far-right Britain First group.

It comes as the Washington Post reported that the President regards Mrs May as being too politically correct. Mrs May brushed off the report, telling reporters: ‘I just get on and make sure that I’m delivering. That’s the job of any politician.’

But it is a blow to the PM who hopes to strike a post Brexit trade deal with the United States.

And in a fresh knock to the UK-US relationship , utwa sconfirmed htvat Mrs May will no sit down for a fomrmal bilateral iwth Mr Trump at the G&.

>“When it comes to trade - the positions are very clear. The President of the United States thinks that the U.S. has been treated in an unfair way by Europe and by others, and the others think that this is not the case,” Juncker told a news conference.
>“We will explain this through facts and figures, that this is not the right view one should have on this topic,” Juncker said before the start of a summit of leaders of the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, Germany, France and Italy.

It just shows how utterly out of touch and blinkered the leadership of the EU has become.

Trump has made a massive performance out of saying essentially "It's great for us to put tariffs on anyone we want, but anyone who puts tariffs on is is rude and stupid." and yet Junker honestly believes that "facts and figures" are going to change his mind?
It's the archetypal story about the nerdy kid who gets beat up by a bully, then decides to explain to the bully why he's better than him. Well the nerdy kid grew up to be a tyrant heading towards being in charge of an entire continent, but never learnt why he was always getting punched in the face.

>>84329You're suggesting that they should play Trump's game. The trouble with that is, like any good idiot, he'll bring them down to his level and beat them with experience. There's not much they can do about the fundamental reality that the general public at large are stupid.

The good thing about US presidents, though, is that we can rely on a new one with totally opposing values coming into power in another four to eight years. Anyone buckling to Trump's madness is only going to weaken their hand when it comes to bargaining with whichever poor bastard is tasked with trying desperately to fix the mess he's caused.

Off on a tangent, surely Sajid Javid is the clear favourite for next Rory leader now. Mogg is too far right and easily ridiculed. Boris has burnt all his bridges. Hunt, Grayling, Fox et all are all tainted by their briefs. The only problem with Javid is he the usual isn't shade of grey the tories like.

>>84332Javid will have huge support behind him as the Tories will consider it a big PR coup to have had the first BME Prime Minister.

British South Asians are foreigners the right-wing don't mind. They are exactly the sort of hard-working self-made men who don't rock the established social order that they like to sing the praises of.

Indians in particular are Tory as fuck. You always see rich Asian blokes wearing over the top gold watches and chains and such, nice tailored suits, driving a big Bentley or Rolls... The traditional image of wealth, because they're the most successful discount carpet supplier in West Yorkshire and want everyone to know it.

>>84334 The problem with Boris is that he's not only burnt his bridges, he's also exposed himself as incompetent. The carefully managed image of a genius pretending to be a bumbling fool has shattered and people can now see that he genuinely is a bumbling fool.

I think Mogg will be seen as the pariah the Tories need to push their dream Brexit over the precipice. Easily ridiculed and exposed more than once as being a proper Fagin type but he understands international finance and commerce and has shown time and time again that he's bigger than the backlash he gets for his far-right espousal.

August 2019 is being very generous. I see May being ousted before Christmas with the current loss of Davis and Johnson.

Jacob Rees-Mogg and his family have been ambushed by protesters outside his home in Westminster.

Footage posted on Tuesday by Class War, an organisation claiming to be a “working class action group”, showed police standing guard as a small group of demonstrators confronted the Conservative MP, his wife, four of his six children, and their nanny.

“Your dad won’t answer the question,” one man tells two of Mr Rees-Mogg’s children, after the Brexiteer refused to reveal how much their nanny was paid. “You’re daddy’s a totally horrible person, lots of people don’t like your daddy, do you know that? He’s probably not told you about that. Lots of people hate him.”

>>84444>"It was a few anarchists who turned up and it wasn't very well organised. It wasn't terribly serious. We are a free country. They weren't violent. They aren't admirers of mine. I am in public life and not everybody is going to like me. That is a reality of public life. I'd have preferred it if it hadn't happened but I don't want to get it out of perspective. I think much worse things happen to many other people."

At least he isn't even trying to play the victim card like most people would do if they'd had a mob camp outside their house and directly address their children like that. I don't find myself agreeing with him a lot but he's a class act, something that is perhaps easier to become when you're the sort of person who grew up with a nanny.

Idk. It's easy enough to so that it's not on to harass the children of a member of government, but it's not like the government isn't above harassing the children of people it finds inconvenient. I mean, if someone engages in illegal anti-government activity, they'll be kidnapped and imprisoned, and their children will be made damn sure aware then that the government don't think their parent is a very nice person. Given that this does seem to act as a good deterrent, maybe heckling children is a good way of stopping MPs from being shits.

This is a bloody nightmare, we're going to be sunk without a trace by demented Thatcherites and soulless careerists because of trade deals no one even cared about 18, 24 months ago. I'm not a hysterical remainer, but now the Tories are taking the piss.

>>85896The irony is that Johnson (stop calling him "Boris") musses up his hair on purpose whereas Trump goes to great lengths to intricately conceal his FUBAR hairline. The Ying and Yang of shite do's.

I'd urge all of you to watch this talk by Rory Stewart about his book The Places In Between. It gives abundant evidence for why Stewart is a completely different calibre of human being to any of the other leadership candidates. IMO he is the only person who stands any real chance of fixing the godawful mess we're in.

I have a horrible feeling that she'll take us into no deal, the economy will collapse, she'll impose martial law and I'll find the whole thing powerfully erotic. I don't want to be in a lifestyle BDSM relationship with the British government.

I think it's important that we push that narrative to the best of our ability. I've seen a lot of political nihilism on social media, of the "they're all useless bastards" variety. That's understandable, but if we act like all politicians are complete dickheads then we let the real dickheads off the hook - why would we expect better if they're all the same? At times like this, I think we need to remain hopeful and remind ourselves that useless leadership is not an inescapable fact of reality, but a temporary result of a particular sort of party-political dysfunction.

The uniforms of the Royal Navy don't really do it for me. Do we not have any of those lovely police officers who can be PM, the ones where you have to resist trying to chat them up when they're on patrol?

>>85912We need an election though. While the intra-party disagreements over Brexit are a massive hurdle, the fact we have a hung parliament is making getting a Brexit deal through near-impossible. We should at least have a go at letting a majority government form, but the Conservatives are so traumatised by the 2017 result that heaven and earth wouldn't move them on the issue, no matter how many withdrawal agreements are squashed.

I'm not sure that would help. The parties are so divided that nobody has a working majority on Brexit-related votes. The Tories would need a majority of at least 40 to overcome the ERG problem, but Labour are even more divided. Are the PLP going to give their support to Corbyn's "jobs-first Brexit", given that the vast majority are remainers? Would Corbyn cede to his backbenchers and put forward BINO or revocation?

I think the only path forward is for a cross-bench coalition, but I'm not sure who would be in a position to build that coalition.

>>85914If both the main parties took their Brexit options into a general election and one of them won off the back of it, I think many parliamentarians would see that the electorate had an opinion on the EU beyond "yes" or "no" and throw their weight beyond such a decision. Much the Brexit anxiety MPs are experiencing is that they're shit scared that one mistep on their personal Brexit policy could see them lose their seats.

There's obviously much more to it than that but this really isn't a time for hung parliaments.

The ERG aren't going to rally behind the WA just because they won an election. Labour still don't have a substantive Brexit policy and are still "leaving all options on the table". The only vaguely realistic scenario that breaks the impasse is a Saville-Tory pact with a no-deal manifesto winning a comfortable majority; the electoral calculus just about works out, but it'd tear apart the conservative party.

The kind of freaky deaky election that would enable that isn't going to happen, a GE is not the European Parliament, people actually bother voting in the former. And the ERG's influence is overstated, as seen by their abortive attempt to pass a no-confidence motion in May earlier this year.

The ERG don't need influence, they have parliamentary votes. Without a) the support of ERG, b) a cross-bench deal or c) a majority of at least 40, the Tories cannot get the withdrawal agreement. They're not going to get anywhere near a majority of 40 if the Brexit Party are standing candidates in a GE, because the Tory vote will be badly split - the BP only need about 14% of the popular vote to ensure a Labour majority.

Labour are unlikely to make any useful progress even with a large majority, because of the complete lack of clarity and unity. Corbyn supports some vague kind of Lexit, but it's not clear how he could bring back a different deal from Brussels or how he could get a majority in the house for it.

I can't see how anyone can get a deal through Parliament at this stage - revocation and no-deal both seem more likely. Revocation would carry a terrible political cost, but it's possible that a majority of back-benchers would support it in the public interest to prevent a no-deal by default. An intentional no-deal is very much a possibility if Boris wins the leadership election and makes a deal with Saville to avoid vote-splitting.

Remember how we got here in the first place. Saville still wields immense power over the Tory party, because he can block their chances at a general election.

>>85919>but it's not clear how he could bring back a different deal from Brussels
It's exceedingly clear how he could bring back a different deal, given that Barnier has stated multiple times that they could offer a different deal with May's red lines off the table.

Is there anything that would make you say "He might be a Tory, I might disagree with him on some things, but he seems smart and well-intentioned?". Are there any circumstances under which you'd give a Tory credit for a job well done?

>>85924Being smart and well intentioned can be terrible things if you're taking an objectionable course of action. Very few people are actively malicious, most have good intentions even when they do truly monstrous things. Credit for a job well done is only deserved if it's a job you're glad was done in the first place. I know I'm kind of skirting around the edges of your question in a tedious way, but I'm not the person you're replying to. I just dislike the framing of the question and all of the implications that run off it even if I accept we're in a position where we have to pick the least bad low-talent figure to run the country. If you're suffering harm as a result of unnecessary government policy decisions, the idea that you should at least empathise with their good intentions in difficult circumstances is perverse.

A Tory is just as capable as a Labourite of making policy that improves lives, but if they're not doing that we shouldn't scramble around for their least-worst positions just to be civil. (The opposite being true if you loathe Labour and love the Tories, obviously. I'm making a non-partisan point about framing.)

>>85924I'm sure he's a real clever clogs who got tippy top marks in his MI6 entrance tests. But the only thing Tories really do is defend and further the interests of capital, which I do not in fact find creditable.

Is there anything that would make you say "He might be a rapist, I might disagree with him on some things, but he seems smart and well-intentioned?". Are there any circumstances under which you'd give a rapist credit for a rape well done?

>>85929You don't have to set out to do harm like some cartoon villain, simple wilful compliance with wrongdoing is sufficient. Plenty of MPs and ministers in all parties would allow horrible things to continue unimpeded to get ahead in politics.

It's presently #97 in the Amazon bestsellers list, which doesn't seem bad for a book released 7 days ago. The reviews are almost all one star or five star.

I can barely describe the hope and optimism I felt when I heard about this book, so much so I pre-ordered it and sat dreaming about all the wonderful contents it would behold. Unfortunately, the book arrived late which gave me even more time to imagine some of the paragraphs and pictures within, truly it would be the personification of heavenly glory.

Of course the first copy that did arrive I had to send back, although the book I received had the correct dust cover, for some reason the book it was covering was actually a recipe book exclusively detailing 20 different ways of making a trifle. When the book arrived for the second time, it still wasn't what I was expecting, for some reason there were many blank pages within, so I took the opportunity to make some fitting additions of my own, a doodle of a male chicken driving a small sail boat. My mum was so proud of that picture, she almost put it on the fridge.

Anyway, on with the review, this book is about the long dead corpses of twelve Victorians whom Jacob would like to sleep with, such is his infatuation with the subject matter and outdated ideas they represent. It reads like the readers wifes section from a top shelf magazine, with stories laid out as if a horny teenager wrote them who would get aroused by reading Shakespeare. I would recommend this book to anybody else of a similar leaning.

Low on content, high on font size, tis truly a masterpiece from a literary genius, as if Einstein ate a dictionary and vomitted the words all over the page. For some reason, there's a lovely poem titled "ode to polio" in there, dedicated to Cyril Smith, wonderful and heart warming I think you'll agree.

>>86022If you're primarily a household name for reasons other than your literary output, yeah. It's top 20 hardback nonfiction. It's not setting the world on fire by any means, but it's also not the huge failure some appear to think. There's an article in the guardian about how this ought to make publishers more reluctant to publish books by politicians, but I have no doubt it's within the range Penguin were expecting.

Thrre are a handful of authors who can reliably sell a shitload of books, but outside of those (especially in nonfiction) the numbers are much lower than most assume.

>>86023I almost want to buy it just to offer a neutral opinion since it seems everyone's using it as their own tedious sounding-board. Reminds me a bit of Empire by Niall Ferguson, a book I find interesting since it dares to diverge from the notion of 'the British Empire was unrelentingly and unequivocally horrible for everyone apart from a few English landowners who lined their pockets with the proceeds of slavery and unlike every other empire in history left absolutely no positive legacy'. Sadly, it too tends to be pilloried by the left or mythologised by the right when it deserves neither.

In any case I'm not going to bother, I doubt Mogg's musings are worth my attention.

>>86029 I picked up a remaindered copy of one of his other books. Chapter 1 was standard libertarian fare, chapter two was worrying about Y2K, chapter 3 is fretting about the next ice age. It's hard going and not particularly fascinating, but I'm not giving it a fair run as it's my bog book. I'll probably finish it as it's sometimes worth reading stuff that's not my natural home.

As a massive lefty myself, I find that typical self-flagellating display of shame regarding the empire to be cringeworthy. It's worth considering we wouldn't have been in any position to carry out the vast social reforms of the 50s and 60s without it. It's just the shipping forecast that you feel bad for all the horrible things in the past you have no connection to as a modern person.

>>86035But therein lies the problem, that poll now makes it look like you either have a strong opinion on Empire or are too thick to pick a side. You get the same problem in online "debates"; the people who are simply uninterested don't get represented. If you were having a conversation about the rights and wrongs of Empire in a cafe or a pub with some mates, the odds are it would be you and one other person going back and forth before everyone else politely asked you to shut up.

I know this is some hefty extrapolation, but I think this inability to not care, or the idea that not having an opinion is a moral failing, is one of the reasons political discussion can become so divisive currently

>>86033>It's worth considering we wouldn't have been in any position to carry out the vast social reforms of the 50s and 60s without it.
I've never liked this position. Sweden took a much more radical direction than we did without any empire whatsoever, and New Zealand got about 95% of the way there while being a far-flung part of one that we used for sheep and recycling place names. It always seems like an excuse for communists to vaguely hint that Attlee and Wilson were actually bad and setting up a non-imperialist form of social democracy is impossible. You could take a very circular route and argue without the British Empire we wouldn't have won WW2 or would've won it in a way that didn't lead to radical social reforms, but that would be an uncommon and odd hypothetical.

Both of those examples had much smaller populations, and therefore lower overheads. We were already up to the eyeballs in debt to the Yanks when we did it too; but our industrial and commercial base was large enough to carry us through, and that was unquestionably thanks, in part, to the prosperity we experienced as a major international power.

>>86037Sweden got rich by trading with its imperial neighbours and staying out of the world wars. There's no Swedish social democracy without imperialism.

And those communists have a point, given Attlee fought a war in Malaya to keep a hold of the rubber trade, which post-WWII was generating more revenue than the entirety of British industrial manufacturing. The idea that a welfare state could have been set up just as easily without such imperial extraction is fantasy.

>>86150We're definitely getting closer to that day, but I'm just not sure we're culturally there yet. I think one of the populist things that Boris/Jeremy will do though is legalise more of it; easy vote winner.

>>86150Principally I think it makes sense to act contrite purely because drugs are illegal. It doesn't set a good precedent for a potential national leader to say they had fun breaking the law. I'm sure tearing down the road with a baseball bat smashing windscreens is a right lark, but I wouldn't admit to it when running for office.

It's also a generational thing. Plenty of older voters still hold a very dim view of narcotics, and of course there are the potential PR disasters that make me dream up scenes from The Thick of It. Politician says he had a great time on coke/ecstasy/third drug; journalists find some grieving parent whose teenager OD'd on it and who now admonishes the politician on telly; said politician is now forced to make the grovelling apology he probably should have just made in the first place. You get the picture.

We do need a serious reappraisal of how we handle drugs in this country, but it would require the sort of brave action you take when you're safely in office, not when you're running for it and creating a million ways to shoot your campaign in the foot.

>>86154Seems like the Tories are tripping over themselves now to admit cocaine/weed use. But as you say, its still all "something I did twenty years ago and regret" rather than something they did regularly and enjoyed - the potential for misuse by political enemies and PR disasters is very high here.

Even The Sun has come out in favour of legislation for weed. ITZ COMING.

The cynic in me suspects that's what it's about to begin with- If you come out and say you used to do a few lines in the past, your enemies can't smear you in the papers by making the shocking reveal about how you used to do a few lines in the past.

Also I feel really vindicated in describing Tory MPs as overwhelmingly "nerdy" hours before all this unbearable "I smoked a joint but I did not inhale" nonsense. Honestly maybe the next PM needs a coke habit, get them a bit gee'd up in time for Brexit, or basically anything, as right now most of them appear to be taking this so casually you'd think it was an honourary post at a local rotary club. Actually I bet those places are bearpits, but you get the jist.

It's interesting watching all the horrible ideas the candidates are coming out with in order to distinguish themselves from the pack. However, I've just learnt this is going to take until the end of July which is absolutely bonkers considering all the crap the country's got on, or maybe it doesn't matter because Parliament works on school time so nothing was going to happen anyway. Either way the Tory go slow is maddening, not least because none of them seem to know what they want out of it.

I don't think he's doing it consiously, but Rory Stewart's pseudo-nomadic campaigning style is similar to the way in which many pre-modern monarchies governed, a fashion which might be in need of a comeback as a way of reengaging voters. Instead of the PM being at Westminster all the time they could just go back on Wednesdays and for important votes, then spend the rest of the time traveling the nation.

>>86173Slight exaggeration. The average polling in 2017 had the Tories on 43.7% (they got 43.5%) and Labour on 35.8% (41%).

They were pretty much spot on with support for the Tories. The polling said more people were voting for the other parties, particularly UKIP, the Greens and nationalistic groups outside of England, who actually ended up supporting Labour.

As much as I loathe Hunt (the same way a miner would loathe Thatcher) even I have to admit. When you put him next to an ape like Johnson and that fucking snivelling deformed little twat Gove, he actually looks like a sensible candidate.

Why doesn't Boris just say "it was a personal matter, a row that got out of hand and a noise complaint was made", it's the way he's dancing around the issue that's making a mountain out of a mole hill. Is my assumption that it's symptom of his upper-class background in which all personal matters are buried deep as deep goes and ignored forever baseless? Like when David Cameron started crying when someone mentioned his dad that one time? It's just so strange that he'd let something so seemingly minor foul up his campaign like this.

>>86293He isn't saying anything about it because the membership doesn't care — they're all unreformed old wealthy white men like him. It's the rest of the population that has a problem, hence him skipping out on the debate where Hunt could use it to attack him in front of them. Personally I think Sky would have done what C4 did and go ahead with an empty chair.

>>86292Watching Scottish nationalists seethe over this has been a gift in itself. Of course he's going to have Scotland's other national drink on a trip, Buckfast is the Scotland people want to get away from.

>>86293I suspect he just wants the story to continue. A nosy neighbour recording a lovers quarrel doesn't make a credible attack but it does keep him in the news and makes those using it look like nutters.